[COMMENT: I am reading
the book, UNChristian, by David Kinnaman, which is based on research by
the Barna polling company, to ask what the new generation of "Mosaics" thinks of
Christianity, and why so many reject it.

Beverley Eakman below has some insight into the
problem. The churches have been secularized, and have lost any clear sense
that God can do anything for us other than through secularized and other
non-Christian helping agencies.

All that can be, and sometimes is, overstated.
Many of those who do not cross the threshold of a church really do
reject the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But the Church today has indeed, I think, become its
own worst enemy. And God cannot be pleased. Pastors rely
increasingly on outside helpers to do their job. A personal
relationship with God is hardly considered a significant help.

As Eakman points out at the end, we Christians more
worship Santa Claus than Jesus Christ during Advent and Christmas. (SeeThe Theology of Santa
Claus.)E. Fox]

Last week (December 9, 2010), Janice Shaw
Crouse, senior fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, a think tank for
Concerned Women for America, wrote a piece on the grim rates of
statistical decline over the past two decades in church membership and
attendance.

The fact has long been
apparent to America’s pastors, but it came as particularly disturbing
news to faithful Christians, especially so close to Christmas. Dr.
Crouse cast the thrust of her article in terms of failure to attract new
and younger worshippers and doubt among older, established members
raised in the faith. She (and the major news outlets that printed her
piece) lumped the two causes together as signals of “unbelief” (e.g.,
“We Don’t Believe: Doubt doubles during past two decades” in the Washington Times).

But there is a huge difference between not
believing and detachment. This distinction was missed both by Dr. Crouse
and others (including pastors themselves) who have, over the years,
decried the same decline in membership rolls and attendance. But their
arguments are rather like the doctor who blames the patient for an
illness he can’t diagnose.

Heaven knows the churches have tried every
trick in the book to draw in a younger generation of (hopefully
financially solvent) parishioners. They’ve done their market research
and added trendy music; laid-back, slapdash attire; large screens with
visuals to replace stuffy old hymnals and prayer books; singles
meet-and-greets; various outreach programs; free babysitting so toddlers
won’t yell during the sermon; etc. And maybe that’s the problem. Market
research is based in psychology and behavioral “science,” not in the
Bible. The Bible presents a much more accurate portrayal of the most
basic human need: personalized support. So pervasive has the practice of
gimmicks and outsourcing become, with parishioner problems being turned
over to social service agencies and “professional counselors,” that even
theological seminaries are steeped more in Zig Ziglar and Freud than
Christ and the Bible.

Take the parishioner (who asked not to be
named) from a conservative, Bible-based Episcopal church in Falls
Church, Virginia. Her husband apparently was in the throes of succumbing
to alcoholism, so she went to her pastor with the intention of seeking
priestly intervention, since her entire extended family had been in the
church for decades. Instead, she was referred by the pastor to Al-Anon.
He gave her the name of another church member affiliated with the group.
The Al-Anon-affiliated parishioner, whom the woman didn’t know, passed
along a book about alcoholism — symptoms, warning signs, awareness
information (all of which she already knew), plus a list of regional
counseling centers. The thrust of the Al-Anon program (and others like
it) is to have worried family members attend endless awareness sessions
and groupie meetings, as it is assumed, barring violence on the part of
the alcoholic, that the only “help” is for family members to learn to
live with it.

[NOTE: I think Eakman is inaccurate here.
The Al-Anon [a ministry to the relatives and friends of alcoholics]
groups I am aware of very much expect the victim to get himself into AA,
and to seek whatever help they can with the aim of getting clean.
They are not fatalistic about alcoholism. E. F.]

Of course, that’s not at all how the church
used to handle issues that required a measure of tact and discretion.
Just 30 years or so ago, the family pastor would have come to the home
and sat down with the couple together. He would first have worked to
thrash out the source of the excessive alcohol consumption — work, home,
children’s issues, financial crises, chronic illness, marital
difficulties, and so on. Then he would have approached this source on a
spiritual, biblical basis while dispensing theological advice concerning
the alcoholism itself, including methods of cutting back until the man
was “clean.” The pastor would be available for support, at least by
phone, possibly with help from a former alcoholic from the church, if
any, should the afflicted parishioner waver.

The same with long-term illnesses: Today, a
team of church volunteers is tasked with making the rounds of patients
in hospitals or ailing parishioners at home. A deacon might also come
around occasionally to check in on the patient and family. But if the
hospital or long-term facility is 15 miles or so away, or if the ailing
patient lingers too long, he (or she) simply drops off the church’s
radar and is forgotten.

One long-time parishioner in
Dallas, Texas (who also asked not to be identified for this article)
suffered a stroke and was confined to a nursing home, since she was
unable to function physically. In an interview, she confided: “You know,
my late husband and I always sat right up front, because of his hearing.
We contributed to every request for a special donation. We said hello to
the minister upon leaving services every Sunday. But after he died and I
was less able to walk the eight blocks to church, and my friends there
started dying off, no one was ever available to take me to services. No
vans, no cars, nothing — and it was a big church! Then I had this
stroke, and the minister came two or three times to the hospital, and
another fellow … would come
here to see me every month
for awhile, then after about seven months nobody ever came at all. Guess
it was too far.” Then she giggled: “But I still get their newsletter and
offering envelopes! I didn’t even have to fill out a change of address!”

Today’s pastors, of course,
have more important things to do, such as meetings for or against
same-sex marriage and abortion, working groups to generate peace in the
Middle East, task forces brainstorming ways to extract additional funds
for missionary programs abroad and, in short, everything under the sun
except
parishioners’ problems.

That strategy works fine — until a member has
a life-altering emergency, or suffers a series of crises. Until then,
most Christians are comfortable with supporting all sorts of programs
for the needy, wherever they are. Christianity, after all, prides itself
on teaching brotherhood and interconnectedness, as well as
self-sacrifice for the greater good, such as doing without a new
flat-screen TV to pay for little Suzie’s private education and even
giving one’s life, if necessary, to save a friend or colleague.

But once disaster hits, or
problems becomes overwhelming, parishioners want their pastor, not a
volunteer, not a deacon, and certainly not a “trained counselor”! They
already know
what the problem is, what they need is moral
support. That’s when they often discover, to their dismay, that the
church is AWOL.

Even so, computer-generated “offering”
envelopes and other solicitations arrive like clockwork, thanks to good
old (expensive) modern technology. What kind of message does this send?

Does it send the message that God does not
really exist? That parishioners would be better off to suspend belief in
God?

Probably not. What
parishioners do suspend, however, is dependence on the church!
Then they withdraw financial support — which no doubt concerns religious
hierarchies far more, but only in a generic, bottom-line sort of way.
That’s because they are thinking “marketing,” not “people.” Somehow,
Harvard Business School grads, with their PhDs in marketing and
behavioral “science,” missed the part about personal interaction. One
reason they missed it, most likely, is the post-modern “culture,” such
as it is. In the parallel universe of the Oprah world everyone wants to
hear about Britney Spears’ divorce (or was it divorces?), Lindsay
Lohan’s drug rehab (or was it rehabs?), football star Brett Favre’s
alleged lascivious e-mail (or was it e-mails?), Oprah Winfrey’s weight
loss program (or was it programs?) and Tiger Woods' sex addiction (or
was it addictions?).

Meanwhile, back in our own universe, people
are reluctant to share information in a public way, even with BFFs. Most
people don’t want to discuss their colonoscopy — not even with their
spouse or mother — so why in the world would we imagine a person wants
to share intimate details of their lives with a church volunteer or
deaconess?

Talented as Dr. Crouse is on national and
international issues and as a former White House speechwriter, she
missed the primary reason why people are falling away from the
church: today’s trend of “farming out” to deacons and multiple “others”
— including psychiatrists, the new substitutes for preachers — personal
problems that beset parishioners. That compounds the effects of three
other issues that Dr. Crouse (and other experts writing on church
decline) have also failed to mention: the increasing marginalization of
Christianity by schools and the courts for 40 years, recent
headline-making sex and financial scandals by clergy, and the crass
commercialization of Christian holidays.

People who get what they need from their
houses of worship tend to be forgiving and might well engage in legal
battle against those who would wipe all evidence of Christianity from
public places, along with those who imply to little schoolchildren that
their faith (or that of their parents) amounts to a collection of silly
myths. They might even help the church pay victims of a sex scandal or
two and shore up the finances of those institutions that fall victim to
wayward clerics. They might forego the ostentatious shopping sprees and
concentrate on renewing the principles Christ taught.

But when parishioners do not
get what they need — moral and spiritual support — from their places of
worship when they need it, they aren’t going to be providing bailouts
when the church
really needs it. Nor will they be advising their progeny to do so!

Which means what? That the habit of
churchgoing is not passed along, and the church as an institution dies.
Hopefully, the tenets and ideals that originally inspired our Christian
denominations won’t die along with the building funds.

_______________

Beverly K. Eakman is a former educator and
retired federal employee who served as writer and editor for three
government agencies, including the U.S. Dept. of Justice, NASA and the
Voice of America. Today, she is a Washington, D.C.-based freelance
writer, author of six books, and a frequent speaker on the lecture
circuit. Her new book, hitting the street next week, is A Common-Sense Platform for the 21st Century
(Midnight Whistler
Publishers, 2010). She
can be reached through her website:
www.BeverlyE.com.